Polish explorers have begun digging for a Nazi train they believe to be buried between Walbrzych and Wroclaw. Many experts doubt that the train even exists, but excavators say it could be full of artwork and jewelry.

Anne Applebaum writes: We can tell ourselves all we want that, in this cynical world, the United States and Europe should pursue realpolitik goals and financial interests. We can argue that the nature of the regimes we support shouldn’t matter, that cold-eyed calculation should determine our foreign policy. But when it really matters, dictators choose other dictators over everything else. Democrats should take note. – Washington Post

Anders Aslund writes: Putin appears to have chosen the time and place. He has done the necessary diplomatic footwork. His military has marched up. He has fabricated a casus belli that resembles the Gleiwitz incident in 1939 that preceded Nazi Germany’s attack on Poland. Given where the Russian troops are located, the Kremlin might want to seize the long-discussed land bridge from Mariupol to Crimea after it has failed to build a bridge over the Kerch Strait. – Atlantic Council

Sadanand Dhume writes: On the world stage, Mr. Modi has used India’s democracy to forge closer ties with the United States, Japan and other like-minded countries. But instead of seeing democratic values—including the right to publicly chant slogans offensive to many Indians—as one of the country’s great strengths, many BJP supporters see it as a weakness. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)

Robert Samuelson writes: We are being fed a largely false narrative on globalization. It is not the source of most of our problems. All dynamic economies experience constant disruptions from changing technologies, shifting consumer tastes and inevitable business cycles. Some instabilities come from abroad; most — for the United States — originate at home. What matters is the economy’s ability to offset the losses with new jobs and opportunities. That is the ultimate test. – Washington Post

Murder and the U.N. Was Dag Hammarskjold, one of the most revered and iconic secretaries-general in the history of the United Nations, assassinated by an apartheid-era South African paramilitary organization that was backed by the CIA, British intelligence, and a Belgian mining company? Could be. FP’s Colum Lynch gets the scoop that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki­-moon will propose reopening an inquiry into allegations that Hammarskjold had been murdered when his plane crashed in Zambia, while he was brokering a peace deal.

Lynch writes that at the time of Hammarskjold’s death, “U.N peacekeepers had been battling Belgian-backed separatists in the mineral-rich Congolese province of Katanga. Days before Hammarskjold’s death, the U.N. launched an offensive against Katanga’s separatists as part of an effort to drive hundreds of Belgian officers and European mercenaries out of the country.”